


Sonoran Dreaming

by cher



Category: The Wood Wife - Terri Windling
Genre: Artist's Journey, Bargaining, F/M, Finding a home, Fluff, Post-Canon, Tricksters
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-16
Updated: 2018-12-16
Packaged: 2019-09-19 20:51:31
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,017
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17008983
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cher/pseuds/cher
Summary: Crow felt the change in the air when the poet woman came back to the mountains.





	Sonoran Dreaming

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Lomedet](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lomedet/gifts).



> With sincere thanks to tigerbright for beta, and to TLvop for beta and local knowledge.

Crow felt the change in the air when the poet woman came back to the mountains. She brought with her the news of his distant kin in the green-growing places far away, though perhaps she did not know she carried it. He tasted their greeting in the air and saw that she wore his old copper bracelet on one wrist, and something silver on her other. Perhaps she did know; perhaps she had spoken with one of them. He'd find out later. 

He watched curiously as she climbed out of her truck—though Johnny Foxxe drove it—and stood stretching in the fading afternoon sun, tilting her face to the wide open sky. Soon it would be time for him to call the storms again, and ride the lightning while the Floodmage took his rains and made them into her plaything. He didn't mind; her antics were often amusing. Perhaps the poet woman would prove so again, as well. 

He retreated when Johnny Foxxe himself got out of the truck to stand close beside her. There would be time later to learn more. 

>>

There were a few places in Maggie's well-traveled life that felt like a homecoming. Her grandfather's place out in West Virginia was one. Tat's studio was another; even when the location changed it was still essentially Tat's place, and therefore welcoming right down to Maggie's bones. And now, Cooper's house, the mountains, and the desert. Some subtle tension dropped away from her as she stood in the afternoon air, hot after the damp cold of Dartmoor, working the kinks out of her back. 

The desert smelled like home, and the blue door of Cooper's house—it would always be Cooper's house, but perhaps she should start to think of it as hers—was like a balm on some raw place in her spirit that had chafed at her absence, mostly unnoticed but now making itself known. Even Crow, perched in the ironwood and thinking himself unseen, felt like a welcome home. 

"Good to have you back," Fox said, slipping an arm around her waist. She leaned into him. 

"It’s good to be home," she confessed, and felt him relax against her, drawing her in closer against his side. He still worried that she'd leave the mountains, and she couldn't blame him, especially when she'd been away without him. Her itchy feet might take some convincing before they understood that they'd found their resting place. She'd just have to keep them happy on the dance floor down at The Hole. And if that wasn't enough, he'd proven that he was equal to the task of following her. It would be a while sinking in, but she thought was happy with that idea. 

"Come on then," he said, grabbing her bag from the truck, where it was sitting beside the carefully wrapped bulk of Tat's gifted print. "Let's see if our friends have managed to mind their own business while you were away." Fox sometimes stayed in his old cabin when she traveled without him. They mostly used it for guests, now, but he said it felt strange to be in the old poet's house without her. 

A little apprehensively—leaving the house unattended didn't always mean it stayed empty—she found her keys and unlocked the old door. Everything looked in order, and she breathed a sigh of relief. Nothing more worrying than the bowl of fresh produce on the kitchen table, no doubt left by Tomás so they'd have something to cook up tonight. And a couple of bottles of the homebrew the Hernández brothers had started making, chilling in the fridge. 

She smiled as she saw the one-eyed coyote trot past, casting a grinning glance at her kitchen window as he went. Yes, nice as it was to spend time with Tat, to walk in her own Dartmoor woods, it was good to be home. 

>>

Maggie rose with the first inkling of the dawn, hearing the sounds of the wind rattling through the mesquite grove. She left Fox still sleeping, wrapped in the brightly colored blanket his sisters had gifted them. 

The air felt stormy and unsettled, and she made a note to check the kitchen for supplies. If the wash flooded, they might not be able to get into town for a few days. The day had that feel about it. 

She found eggs and milk, and cut up fresh asparagus spears from Tomás' garden for a simple breakfast. Fox would want pancakes today, so she mixed the batter and set it aside for him when he woke. Then she let herself out, eager to walk in the mountains after her time away. She'd been gone only two weeks, but the contrast in the landscapes made it seem like half a lifetime. She was getting like Cooper, only happy in the heat of the Sonoran desert. The thought made her smile, when she remembered how dislocated she had felt when she first came here, like a creature accustomed to its familiar rock pool suddenly deposited above the tide line. 

Now she felt the fierce, dry morning heat soaking into her skin and unfurling in her bones. The little megroots tumbled shyly in the saguaro grove, the desert wind kissed her cheek, and a family of quails made their zig-zag way across the path in front of her. As if a well inside her had filled at last, the spring that fed it running clear again after a time of drought, Maggie felt her fingertips itch for a pen, a keyboard. She'd write poems today, and perhaps it would be good work, true work. 

First she needed to greet her friends, bring them the gifts she'd carried from the other side of the world. The spring inside her would run strong, now. The poems would be there, when she sat down later to draw them out. 

Tomás sat as if waiting for her on his front porch. It didn't surprise her at all, and she waved a greeting. 

"Thank you for the vegetables. It was just what I needed to settle back in."

He nodded to her. "Take some squash when you come back past. There's plenty." 

"I will, thank you. Do you think the wash will flood with this storm?"

Tomás gazed at the gathering blue storm clouds, still massing in the distance over the Catalinas. He nodded slowly. "I reckon it's going to be a wild one. Her down in the stream is about due, I think."

"Any advice?"

"Don't go swimming," he said. 

"Very funny," Maggie told him, amused. "But should I go out for supplies? Will we be cut off for long?"

He shook his head. "Don't go out past the wash today; your feathered friend won't be able to resist. You'll end up stuck down in the town instead. Anyway, I'll have to bring the vegetables in or they'll be ruined, and Fox went into town yesterday for the basics. We'll be okay. Enjoy your first flood, it'll really be something afterward. The wildflowers bloom in the creek bed. It's beautiful."

Maggie thanked him, and headed up the trail past his cabin. She'd been planning a long walk this morning, but perhaps she'd just go a little way. She didn't want to be too far from home when those clouds rolled in. Maybe she’d leave her visit to Dora and Juan until after the storm.

But there was someone she wanted to see, before she retreated indoors. 

>>

Up on the rounded stone peak where she'd first met Crow, Maggie waited. The brittlebush flowers were over, but the prickly pear had saved a few blooms for this late in the season. She smiled as she sat on the weathered stone, which was already warm, even this early in the morning. It was going to be a hot day. Up here with the endless sky and the mountains on every side, she put the gathering storm to her back, but kept half a wary eye on it. It would hit fast, when it came. 

She'd lingered with Tomás longer than she'd meant, and she was much too late to catch the last of the sunrise. She hoped Crow would be curious enough about her return to meet her, even if it wasn't one of the liminal times he seemed to prefer. Then again, perhaps the approaching storm counted. If it didn't, there would be another day. It felt important to make the attempt now, but the outcome didn’t matter. 

She thought he'd be close by, after she'd seen him yesterday. She took off one of the silver bracelets she wore, and turned it over in her hands so that it caught the light. 

She smiled when she felt the air shift behind her. Was it unkind to use Crow's nature against him? Perhaps, but to trap the trickster now and again was a joy she had no intention of giving up. 

"Black Maggie, back here again," he said, squatting beside her. He looked as he always looked, a creature made up of the in-between. He showed her his human shape, with his black hair hung around his face, his tattoos seeming more intricate than ever, and his eyes tracked the movement of the silver in her hands. 

"Crow," she said, surprising herself with the depth of warmth in her voice. She'd missed him, abrasive though he could be. "I've brought you a present."

He sat back, evidently surprised. "A present, is it? That's new."

"It's what friends do, when they travel. They bring something back as a gift. Here." She handed him the bracelet, and he took it with something that looked like reverence. 

"This is...mine, and also not mine?"

Maggie grinned. "It's yours. I met one of your brothers, out on the moors where the moonlight is trickier than even your words, Crow. I bargained for one of his bracelets, and won another in friendship. Maybe you'll meet each other on the spiral."

The trickster seemed touched, looking at the bracelet and at Maggie. He began to smile, and then looked chagrined. "Now I'll have to give you a gift in return."

"Well," Maggie said, amused, "it's not required. A gift doesn't always have to be reciprocated between friends. Unless it is _dammas_?"

He nodded, fastening her gift proudly around his strong wrist. "My gift is this, and it is a generous gift because your gift is also generous: I will keep my storms from your house."

"Since all the houses in the canyon are mine, that is a generous gift indeed," she said, heart beating a little faster. It was dangerous to trick the trickster, but she couldn't let an opportunity like that slip by. And, she thought, the influence of each person's first contact among the mountain's spirit people did seem to leave its mark. Initiated by the Trickster, and trickster she would become. Or perhaps always had been; she had never known where Nigel had pulled 'Puck' from as a nickname, but she'd worn it for years before Crow. 

He frowned and looked away, but his words bound him. "You are bold, Black Maggie. But you bring me an item of great power, and so I will bring my storms but keep your houses from harm. If I remember."

She kept her relief from her face, remembered that she mustn't thank him, and tapped her own bracelet. "You'll remember."

He seemed to forget his annoyance as he touched the silver spirals. The gift appeared to please him even more than she'd hoped it would. That was good; acquiring it had been hair-raising. 

"I'll leave now," he said abruptly, and was gone in a whirl of black feathers. Maggie leaned back against the rock, feeling strong and sure, and listening to the song of the mountains flow through her. 

She'd get up in a moment, get back down the canyon before Crow dumped his rain on her head to punish her cheek. He'd try; _she_ wasn't a house. 

But for the moment, she rode the currents of the mountains, and breathed in the feeling of home.


End file.
